That's what a replacement battery for a Lexus will cost.

True, the battery is guaranteed for 8 years or 160,000 kilometres, but according to the News national motoring editor, the average age of the Australian fleet is 10 years.

And, what about people who have to buy used cars? Not a Lexus, perhaps, but 8 other manufacturers didn’t respond when asked the same question that Lexus was asked.

EV enthusiast, energy minister Bugs Bowen has not mentioned this cost. Perhaps, like most people he isn't aware of it - like so many other things hidden by the yabber when it comes to electric vehicles.

ttbn,
Bugs Bowen wouldn't even know that normal people have to earn then pay !
And, normal people aren't employed in the Public Service as he has been all his life !
Silly sod hasn't a clue !

Indyvidual

Unfortunately, what you rightly say about Bowen is true of far too many of our politicians - on both sides of the fence.

The whole battery electric car scam is simply a way to get the less wealthy of us back on the bus, & out of personal transport. Old petrol powered cars are much more suitable for us peasants.

For example my good car is a 1980 Triumph TR7. I bought 2 of these, not running in 2002 for $1200 the pair. One was rust free in good condition, but a totally shot engine & other mechanicals, the other had many good parts in a rusty body.

I totally re-built the brakes on the rust free car, fitted the good mechanical parts, plus some new parts & had a reliable car. A mate splashed a coat of paint on it for $1200 & for under $6,000 I had a great little sports car. 70,000 kilometers & 20 years later it is still as new.

2016 I bought an insurance write off, [hail damaged] 2002 low mileage Mazda SP20 for $3000 at auction. The damage is minor & after a polish she looked pretty good. It does shopping trolley duties, & is used around the paddocks. It has given 60,000 trouble free kilometers.

My biggest expense is tyres. I only use top quality tyres, & throw them out at 6 years old, no matter how little worn. I like a good grip on the road.

There is no way you could do this with battery cars, the costs would be 1000% higher at least, for no advantage, & I'd be robbing our flora of some food.

Hasbeen has a point.

How many people remember the days when very few ordinary families had a car. I do. We could well be heading back to those days.

ttbn,
I remember those days very well; it wasn’t until post war, in 1948 that my father bought a car, a 1928 Chev 4 tourer which we used up until 1955 when I got a 1937 La Salle..
Pre car days and many years after we used public transport, the local bus company provided a half hour service, like clockwork to Lidcome station where there was a train every quarter-hour, once one was in Sydney city there were trams galore going to nearby suburbs and to all the main beaches.
Getting around was easy and fairly quick and cheap and what’s more one didn’t need to find a parking spot.

Is Mise

The first car in my family was a 1949 Hillman Minx. Prior to that it was walk or cycle; there was no public transport in my country town, apart from a steam train to seaside holidays.

Thanks to the Greens, emissions are skyrocketing ! The green technologies are highly polluting in their production !

There is one major fact that almost no one mentions.
The drive for electric cars has NOTHING to do with global warming.
The first hint of why EVs are coming was noticed in the
CEO of Royal Dutch Shell address to the AGM at the Hague in 2017.
He announced that the company had formed a group within the company
to study how the company is to exit the oil industry.
That announcement disappeared from Google searches about a year later.
Around the same time BP changed its motto to Beyond Petroleum.
The reason Shell gave to the shareholders was that the cost of search
for new fields and their development had become prohibitive.
The Shell company has been restructured into a single company now only
registered on the London share registry.

Around two years later a group of motor manufacturers, GM, Ford,
Hyundai, BMW, Volkswagen, Reno and others announced their intention
to introduce EV models. A couple of years later almost all of them had
announced they would be ceasing petrol and diesel cars manufacture.
Not a co-incidence I venture to say. Someone had whispered in their ears.

At the time of these announcements Nissan and Mitsubishi had been
producing EVs and selling them in Australia.
The last I heard about battery replacement batteries was the Nissan Leaf
battery was around AU$8000 to replace, but that was a few years back.
As far as the battery life is concerned Lithium batteries last longer
if you do not use fast chargers normally, and charge them from 10% to 90% overnight.

So to sum up EVs are coming ready or not !

Apart from the cost of the batteries, the lithium required for the number EV's said to be necessary is 1.3 billion tonnes. There is not that much lithium in reserve now, and it is unlikely there ever would be. We are also short of nickel and cobalt

Always remember that IC vehicles can be run on wood gas and wood is a renewable resource.
Steam vehicles also and we regularly use our steam traction engine for plowing and haulage work.
It’s not as convenient as the diesel tractor but it’s more fun, warmer in winter and not smelly, besides which it’s better for cooking and making tea.

Great Idea Ise Mise, but I wonder if we could grow enough trees that
grow quickly enough.
Of course some are pushing hydrogen.
Trouble there is if you use electricity to make the hydrogen it is
much more efficient to use the electricity before making hydrogen.
Hence better batteries needed.

ttbn,
Nearly half a tonne of lithium for every person on this planet?
I think your calculations are way off!

The calculations are not mine but those of Professor Simon Michaux in a paper 'Assessment of the Extra Capacity Required of Alternative Energy Electrical Power Systems to Completely Replace Fossil Fuel'.

My mistake was sloppy reading and reporting.

The 1.3 billion EV's proposed in Scenario F would require 282.6 million tonnes of lithium.

Michaux's calculations show that "global reserves, let alone global production, may not be enough to resource the quantity of batteries required.

The conclusion is that renewable energy will not work the way it is being planned.

There is information on the enormous wind and solar requirements also, but they are irrelevant to this thread.

Morse,
Small scale only and it helps if you have a property, my eldest son, who owns and runs the place, currently has 40 acres in English Ash coppice for future wood needs and ash has the great advantage of burning green if needs be, and of drying quickly as it has a iow moisture content.

I haven't look at the details of the report you reference but these figures seem way, way off. If I remember correctly a typical EV only has about 10kg of Lithium (order of magnitude- some less, some more than 10kg but none in the 100's of kg). So a billion cars is only 10 million ton. The figure 282 million seems to be out by an order of magnitude.

By-the-way: Many current models of EV's don't have Cobalt nor Nickel in the battery. They use LFP technology- L is for Lithium (Li), F for Iron (Fe) and P for phosphate (PO4). Iron is extremely cheap and abundant (for example, the ore they mine in Western Australia is literally dirt cheap) and phosphate is also cheap (it is a common fertilizer that farmers use by the ton). However, Lithium is expensive- ball park: 100$/kg.

Also, there is really no need to use lithium in solar/wind grid storage- the reason it is used in cars is because it is in a sweet spot for energy-stored/mass and energy-stored/volume. But for large scale grid storage the weight and size of the battery is not an issue since they sit immobile on the ground. Hence engineers can use whatever battery chemistry they like- eg: heavier but cheaper batteries (though with currently available configurations of solar+batteries it is still more expensive than coal).

As the Albanese government blunders on towards the same energy chaos in Europe, the UK government has warned Brits to expect total power blackouts of 3 hours at a time by February next year.

What is it with the idiots in Canberra that they don’t take notice of obvious warnings! The liberal Liberal party can't say anything in opposition because they had the same loony policies of emissions reductions and unreliable energy, along with 'no nuclear'.

ttbn,
The report you mentioned is long, so I haven't had time to look at it in much detail yet, but I did notice (on page 651) that the 282.6 million tonnes is for the total world EV battery mass, not just the lithium.

BTW I apologise for a similar mistake - I wrote "nearly half a tonne" when I should've written "nearly a fifth of a tonne".

Anyway, I think 282.6 million tonnes battery mass may be an overestimate, as in Asia where BAAS (batteries as a service) infrastructure already exists because of the popularity of electric motorcycles, electric cars with smaller (and easily swappable) batteries could well become commercially successful.

As for your later post:
Europe's "energy chaos" is the result of their main supplier refusing to sell them gas. Australia doesn't even import gas, so how do you imagine we're heading for the same chaos?

>the UK government has warned Brits to expect total power blackouts of 3 hours at a time by February next year

Not quite. National Grid warned that IF there's a shortage of gas AND mainland EU countries are unwilling to sell Britain electricity then there's a chance they might have to curtail supply, in which case residents of affected areas would be warned a day in advance that their power could be cut or up to three hours.

Aidan,
Australia imports a significant amount of natural gas, much of it produced in Australia.
We are, as far as I know, the only country in the World that exports gas and then imports gas, Google ‘ Australian gas imports’.

Is Mise

We appear to also be the "only country in the world" mismanaged by complete idiots. The gas thing is one example; the other is that, while Europe has made foolish mistakes by listening to liars, they are now trying to rectify their stupidity, whereas Australian idiots, having seen what happened in Europe, are hell bent on committing the same atrocity here.

People can't get more stupid than that; too stupid to be able to rectify what they have done to us when they finally get the message - if they ever do.

Australia, once the Lucky Country, is now the Stupid Country.

Once the world transport has been converted to battery, how big a hole will be created to produce the battery? How long will the Earth sustain reaping the minerals for future batteries? Batteries are a short-term fix.

Josephus: "Once the world transport has been converted to battery, how big a hole will be created to produce the battery"

Not a very big hole at all. Here's a challenge for you: try and find an existing mine on google maps but using sight alone. ie: don't ask it to place a search pin at the location of a mine rather you have to visually search for it by zooming in on the global map with your own eyes. I'll bet that you will only be able to find mines that you already know where they are. If you don't already know where a mine is then they are difficult to find. And that's because mines cover an insignificant percentage of the planet's surface area.

"Always remember that IC vehicles can be run on wood gas and wood is a renewable resource". Is Mise

Yes Is Mise, I am looking for a 30s carburetor car such as a 36 dodge, with really tough mechanicals, & a simple fuel induction system to convert to wood gas. I will use it for fun, & keep it for emergency transport.

To my knowledge no one has worked out how to use wood gas with a fuel injected engine.

Hasbeen,
I was intrigued by your last comment so I investigated further. Although wood gas is not itself suitable for fuel injection (due to the large volume required as its energy density is low) it can be used with fuel injected engines. Dual fuel engines seem to be the best way to exploit wood gas on a domestic scale.

On an industrial scale, of course, it's better to refine the wood gas to produce a more energy dense fuel.

____________________________________________________________________________

Is Mise,
>Australia imports a significant amount of natural gas, much of it produced in Australia.
Much? Don't you mean all?
Though Austraia imports some LPG from the USA, the natural gas is all from beneath Australia and the surrounding sea. However a small proportion of it is from over the East Timorese maritime border, so is classed as an import.

Austraia is not the only country that both imports and exports natural gas; the UK and the Netherlands are other examples.